Three weeks ago, controversial new legislation was passed which would permit Israeli authorities to hold migrants who didn’t possess valid visas ‘indefinitely’.

Approximately 60,000 migrants from Eritrea and Sudan, among other nations, have passed into Israel since 2006, according to authorities. A border fence, since constructed, has helped to stem the flow from Egypt.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told members of his Likud party on Monday that: “Demonstrations won’t help them.”
“These are illegal infiltrators seeking work,” he added.

Human rights organizations believe that it would be dangerous for the migrants to be deported back to their home countries as their lives could be at risk. Many are not just migrants but asylum seekers.
“We have fled persecution, dictatorships, civil wars and genocides,” Dawud, an Eritrean asylum-seeker partaking in the mass demo, told AFP on Sunday.